I have a rare memory: I remember Pearl Harbor! US involvement in WWII was packed into the next couple of years: ’41 to ’45. I also remember in that period hearing huge airplanes overhead: bracing, trembling. There were airplanes before WWII, but it wasn’t until Hiroshima that the sky was filled with nghmare. Little kid, six, seven years old, hears the loud bombers: we brace, we freeze, we’re ready for eclipse.

By 1950 people my age were ready for any day to be our last. It didn’t matter whether the US won or lost some war, we expected our life to be at an end. And we certainly didn’t believe that even at age 3 or 4 that we were innocent in the matter. There followed Kennedy’s threats and Khrushchev banging his shoe and bombs and bombers filling Havana.

Most Christians believe that they’re the exception, No? I was always ready to believe that we are the rule: there’s no essential difference between us and the goofballs who stood by while the Romans, led by the pecker by Jews, crucified Jesus. We’re stupid, we’re evil, and we’ll do stupid and evil things at every opportunity.

But let’s concentrate on only one thing here: I heard loud noises in the sky, monster machines roared overhead, I was not the only mortal expecting any moment to be my last. We bombed, why shouldn’t we be bombed? The Passion typified our acts of justice: we built a republic on slavery, not to mention genocide: anyone can see the quality of our innocence.

Did Germans believe after WWI, with Hitler’s rise in the ’30s, that bellicosity made them safe? ? I suspect that’s a fault universal in human belief.

Look at Trump: he really seems to believe that leading with his face makes him look intelligent.
We want to look intelligent, fool the world, so we elect him.

I drafted this last week without posting it. Now I do post it, sparked by today’s Yahoo headline that N Koreas IBMs aren’t very dangerous after all. I believe it; but it doesn’t make me trust the world. I don’t trust humans, I don’t find human intelligence to be genuine: more like BT Barnum suckers: This way to the Exodus.

Note: Am I quoting Barnum’s sign correctly? Barnum charged admission, people pid it, but then stayed all day. Barnum wanted more cash at the entrance: so he put up sign intended to confuse the illiterate, get them to leave: they could come back in if they paid a fresh entrance fee. Good. But was “exodus” the word he chose to mask “exit”? You know what I mean whatever the word was.

Fire & Fury
2017 08 10 Uh oh, now Trump is toying with the nukes, toying with crazy men.
Read Jared Diamond’s stats on primitive warfare: seems to be universal, universally deadly: how did we ever get to here from there. One day we’ll really be here, and there, and everywhere: so much jelly.